Feature

Illuminate Naturally in Darkness

Transitory spaces (hotel rooms, airplanes) allow us to gain a deeper understanding of the inherent transience of our contemporary moment.

Photographs and text by Judith Stenneken

Illuminate Naturally in Darkness

Transitory spaces (hotel rooms, airplanes) allow us to gain a deeper understanding of the inherent transience of our contemporary moment.

It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all ischange, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.

—Henry Miller

One could also add: all is motion. This body of work deals with the seemingly simple fact that Henry Miller states so clearly in this quote: everything is ongoing and never finished.

Transition is a permanent condition. There is no beginning, middle and end. There is no sunset, nor is there a sunrise—instead, we are the ones in motion.

I use images of the journey, the voyager and transitory spaces (like hotel rooms and airplanes) as metaphors to describe transition as the sole constant in life and in betweenness as the primary state of being. The concepts of departure and arrival dissolve as the traveler keeps moving—a gravity to constant change. The voyager’s home becomes the hotel room and the airplane. Spaces where we pause but never dwell.

We are in a phase in which change happens at an accelerating pace. It can leave one dizzy, disoriented and overwhelmed at times—like a loss of control. We “burn out” as we try to keep up with this new pace, and some of us turn to old beliefs in our attempt to reestablish a balance that seems lost.

I think the acceleration of change forces us out of our comfort zones, out of our habits and into adjustments. It forces us to react. Simultaneously, it offers a chance to embrace two core conditions of life that we usually prefer to ignore: impermanence and uncertainty.

—Judith Stenneken

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like these previous features: Deconstructing the Self in America’s Southwest, two series that express the photographer’s desire to find something more meaningful in her experience of the world; our review of Walden, a striking new photobook that meditates on humanity’s relationship with nature; and Mali—A Journey to Neverland, Jana Dorn’s project on visualizing the complex relationships between sibling love and distance.